A first look at Power BI on the Office Mechanics show

Yesterday we announced exciting news for Power BI. Anyone with a US business email account can try the preview of the new Power BI today for free. The preview introduces a number of new Power BI including dashboards, new visualizations, support for popular software-as-a-service applications, a native iPad app and live “hybrid” connectivity to on-premise SQL Server Analysis Services tabular models. The preview will be made available internationally in the coming months.

When we reach general availability we will introduce a free offer, available as Power BI. We’ll also introduce Power BI Pro, available at a low monthly price, with additional data capacity and features for the enterprise. In anticipation of this move, on February 1 we are lowering the price of our in-market Power BI service to $9.99 per user a month, a 75 percent reduction in price. More information on these offers is available here.

For those not familiar with Power BI, it is a cloud-based business analytics service (software-as-a -service) for non-technical business users. With just a browser – any browser – or a Power BI mobile app, customers can keep a pulse on their business via live operational dashboards. They can deeply explore their business data, through interactive visual reports, and enrich it with additional data sources.